Metropolitan San Diego: How Geography and Lifestyle Shape a New Urban Environment, edited by Larry R. Ford
本书描绘了圣地亚哥大都市区的历史、文化、空间发展和当前问题，通过分析不同社区的生活方式与环境，揭示了该地区的多样性与复杂性，适合城市研究者与规划者阅读。
Metropolitan San Diego: How Geography and Lifestyle Shape a New Urban Environment , by Larry R. Ford . 2005 . Metropolitan Portraits Series . Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press . 240 + x . ISBN 0-8122-2838-9 , cloth, $49.95 ; ISBN 0-8122-1898-1 , paper, $19.95 . Under the editorship of urbanist Judith A. Martin, the University of Pennsylvania Press has embarked on the Metropolitan Portraits series. Each volume is intended to describe the history, culture, spatial development, and current problems of a metropolitan region. The series includes Carl Abbott on Portland (Oregon), Sam Bass Warner on Boston, Patricia Gober on Phoenix, and Steven Conn on Philadelphia, and now geographer Larry Ford of San Diego State University complements these works with a portrait of his home region. In highly readable prose Ford presents the distinctive images, environments, and lifestyles of San Diego, a major urban area that has inspired surprisingly little scholarly work. Ford begins by examining the images that have influenced San Diego's development and cityscape. In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries the community donned Mediterranean, Spanish, coastal garb, presenting itself as a land of haciendas, missions, citrus groves, avocados, sunny skies, scenic shorelines, and Navy ships. This was how San Diegans and Americans in general imagined the community, and the proliferation of stucco and tile-roofed homes, beach resorts, and irrigated semitropical vegetation reflected and reinforced San Diego's underlying self-perception. Having established the area's imagined identity, Ford then proceeds to San Diego's realities, examining social and economic trends. One reality that distinguishes the region and conflicts with the prevailing image of perfect weather is the variety of climatic zones. Whereas the coastal region is cool and foggy, a few miles inland warmer temperatures prevail. A mountain zone farther to the east offers yet another climate, and beyond the mountains eastern San Diego County is torrid desert with summer temperatures 40 degrees higher than those on the coast. In other words, there is not a San Diego climate; the region offers a range of temperatures and landscapes in sharp contrast to the more uniform environments of, say, the Philadelphia, Indianapolis, or Kansas City metropolitan areas. Metropolitan San Diego includes a diversity of lifestyles as well, and in the remainder of his book Ford describes various “epitome places” in the region that exemplify San Diego's varied ways of life. First he examines the central city beginning with the Ocean Beach district, which he characterizes as a place of resistance. It is perceived as a counterculture area that resists the forces of social and cultural homogenization. Also within the city are the older neighborhoods of Sherman Heights and Kensington, the former a district of Anglo-Victorian structures inhabited by Latinos and the latter a community of tile-roofed haciendas from the 1920s and 1930s with an almost exclusively Anglo population. Ford devotes a number of pages to the city's downtown, which has emerged as a major residential area during the past two decades. Once a decaying core with little to attract visitors or perspective residents, San Diego's downtown is today one of the most vibrant in the United States with “theme districts” like Little Italy and the Marina area to give it a sense of place. After examining the core, Ford moves on to epitome places on the fringe, contrasting the lifestyle of wealthy La Jolla with relatively impoverished Tijuana. San Diego's fringe is not a homogeneous, monotonous mass. Instead, it is a land of extremes and contrasts. Ford reinforces this notion by juxtaposing the small-town atmosphere of La Mesa with the rigidly restrictive planned community of Eastlake and disorderly, semirural Lakeside, an area of horse ranches and old West ambience. Contrasting lifestyles also characterize exurban San Diego County. Ford discusses the Indian reservations with their booming casinos, the preserved but fire-threatened mining town of Julian, the desert community of Borrego Springs, bucolic Fallbrook, and beachfront Oceanside with its adjacent Marine base. Altogether San Diego County adds up to a motley collection of lifestyle communities, reflecting the social and cultural differences of the region's residents and the climatic and topographic diversity of the natural environment. Ford's portrait of this richly diverse region is a pleasure to read. He clearly appreciates his surrounding metropolitan environment. In a world where so many commentators wear the mental straightjacket of new urbanism, Ford's delight in exploring suburban cul-de-sacs and expansive exurban homesteads is refreshing. He portrays San Diego; he does not judge it. San Diego is presented as a colorful mosaic, and even the hues that some may deem ugly fascinate Ford. Ford's emphasis on epitome places, however, limits his portrait. The reader gets a windshield view of San Diego as Ford takes his audience from one community to the next, offering glimpses of the diverse built and natural environment. The social, political, and policy issues of the region as a whole receive less attention. For example, Ford devotes relatively little space to the questions of who governs San Diego and what public policies and conflicts are influencing the region's development. He offers a detailed portrait of places, environments, and lifestyle niches; he deals less with the region's underlying intangibles of power and policy that cannot be seen from a car window. Moreover, his primary focus is on the residential rather than the commercial environment. Even when discussing the city's downtown he concentrates on new housing development with little concern for the banks, office towers, stores, and government buildings that have traditionally defined downtown as the regional hub. Because lifestyle is his primary concern, he is most interested in how people live in their home neighborhoods rather than in how they work. The people of Ocean Beach, Lakeside, La Mesa, and Eastlake reside in distinctive lifestyle zones but may spend 8 hours each weekday in the same workplace. Ford's approach perhaps places too much emphasis on them as separate communities rather than as an interconnected whole. Overall, however, Ford offers a revealing account of a major metropolitan area. San Diego needed scholarly attention, and Ford provides it. His work presents a superb view of the region and a model for approaching metropolitan America that other scholars might want to emulate.